Miami plane crash: New web cam video emerges as pregnant woman among seven hurt

A 36-year-old mechanic from RED Air interviewed by the Miami Herald provided his first impressions about the landing of the plane on Tuesday night, which he describes as being a “hard landing”.

Hector Dejesus, employed by the airline and a former Dominican military aviation mechanic, first told a reporter from the Florida-based outlet that he thought perhaps there was a pilot error in the landing.

“I suppose it was a hard landing. We do maintenance all the time. I suppose it was that,” he told the Miami Herald. “I’m in shock. I would see things like this in the air force.”

An investigation into the crash is being handled by the National Transportation Safety Board, who told reporters they’d be sending a team of investigators to the incident site on Wednesday.

A live streaming webcam captured the moments when a jetliner from Red Air Flight crash-landed and caught fire on a Miami International Airport runway on Tuesday.

PTZtv’s Miami Airport Cam showed the plane skidding through the tarmac before coming to stop in the grassy area.

First responders from the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue could be seen reaching the site of the crash as soon as the plane, carrying 126 passengers, came to a halt.

In the video shared with CBS News, at least three fire service units were seen approaching the Red Air flight as black smoke from the fire billowed into the sky.

Read the details in this report:

A plane carrying 126 people caught fire after a landing gear failure caused it to slide across a runway at Miami International Airport on Tuesday evening (21 June).

Miami-Dade County mayor Daniella Levine Cava was briefed by fire and rescue services personnel after she arrived at the scene of the crash.

“Apparently a tire burst, and then it went back up and came back down, and the landing was so hard that the entire landing apparatus was destroyed and the belly of the plane is on the ground,” Ms Cava told media as she confirmed that three people were injured in the crash.

Miami ABC affiliate Local 10 reports:

A total of seven people, including a pregnant woman, were injured Tuesday during a rough landing that caused a plane to catch fire at Miami International Airport, the airline confirmed on Wednesday.

According to a spokesperson for RED Air, five people have been released from the hospital and two others remained hospitalized Wednesday morning, including the pregnant woman, although they are expected to be released later in the day.

Twitter user @findmory posted a video of the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue response to the crashlanding of the Red Air flight from the Dominican Republic as his own flight taxied past the wreckage.

A great deal of damage can be seen to the nose of the aircraft from where it impacted the runway after the landing gear collapsed.

A webcam that was live at the time of the Miami plane crash captured the moment when a RED Air aircraft crash-landed and caught fire on a Miami International Airportrunway on Tuesday.

PTZtv’s Miami Airport Cam showed the plane skidding through the tarmac before coming to stop in the grassy area, as Namita Singh reports:

Weighing in on the crash at Miami International Airport, aviation expert Scott Harrington told CBS News that it is a miracle that more people were not hurt in the plane crash.

“Absolutely, it seemed like... again I’m not exactly sure of the specifics of this flight... but it seemed like the pilots did a good job to keep it all in one piece. To get it stopped so the plane could be stopped in a position so rescue equipment can access the airplane,” he said.

Pilots are trained to be calm in such situations, he added.

“We are just hyper-focused. Our brain goes into flight mode. We are focused on the problem, focused on taking care of the solution as much as we can. Sometimes if a mechanical part breaks, there’s really not a whole lot we can do.”

Seven people were injured in the crash-landing at Miami International Airport, a spokesperson for Red Air Flight told Local10 News in a statement on Wednesday.

The number is four more than Miami-Dade aviation department spokesperson Greg Chin confirmed to reporters in the aftermath of the crash on Tuesday.

Red Air said while five of the people who were hospitalised by the crash had been released, two others – including a pregnant woman – were expected to be released either on Wednesday evening or Thursday.

Passengers share the horrifying experience as they recounted the crash landing of their plane at Miami International Airport.

“I thought I was going to die,” Paola Garcia told 7 News. “All the windows were broken, and someone like, broke his leg and arm,” she said adding that she ran to the exit as soon as the plane came to a stop and made her way to the tarmac as black smoke billowed. “I started running and I jumped, and I thought it was going to explode.”

“I saw the fire, I saw the smoke. It was dark, actually,” said another fellow passenger Paolo Delgado. “Then there was like an apparent smell or something. People were like, screaming all around. I don’t know, like panic.”